Local Taxes Issues in Cruise Business

[fred63]

Hi,

We are at the very very early stage of setting up a cruise business sometimes in a distant future. We are just checking various points to see if this is possible or not, complicated or not and I wonder what are the taxes/regulations issues when you cruise into various countries.

For instance, let say that we want to cruise in various countries in South East Asia :
What is the regulation about boat registration ? Can we choose where to resigter it ?
what is the regulation about staff, which laws should we followed.
What are the taxes to be paid in various countries where we cruise ?

thanks

[Doodles]

Originally Posted by fred63

Hi,

We are at the very very early stage of setting up a cruise business sometimes in a distant future. We are just checking various points to see if this is possible or not, complicated or not and I wonder what are the taxes/regulations issues when you cruise into various countries.

For instance, let say that we want to cruise in various countries in South East Asia :
What is the regulation about boat registration ? Can we choose where to resigter it ?
what is the regulation about staff, which laws should we followed.
What are the taxes to be paid in various countries where we cruise ? To use a favorite answer from my old profession as a tax advisor ... "it depends."

thanks

By "cruise business" what do you mean? Are you just passing through a country with paying guest on board or are you taking people out for day sails or something else entirely? It is going to depend on the nature of the business and then the country. All will be different .

[fred63]

Hi Doodies,

Let say, as an exemple, that you start your 1 or 2 weeks cruise with paying guests from Phuket and go to Koh Lipe (Thailand) AND Langkawi (Malaysia) and various places between then return back to Phuket to disembark your guests and pick up next ones.

Thanks

[Doodles]

Originally Posted by fred63

Hi Doodies,

Let say, as an exemple, that you start your 1 or 2 weeks cruise with paying guests from Phuket and go to Koh Lipe (Thailand) AND Langkawi (Malaysia) and various places between then return back to Phuket to disembark your guests and pick up next ones.

Thanks

I'm talking most of the top of my head here so don't quote me but I'm quite certain this would mean running a business out of Thailand or so it sounds. At a minimum unless you are Thai you are going to need a work permit and a visa for yourself. From what I've heard you will also need a Thai captain and probably Thai crew. They don't like foreigners taking jobs that Thai's could fill and that's true in a lot of developing countries. As for the rest of the red tape and regulations regarding running a boat charter I'm no help, but there are lots of them around. A Google search should turn up some, then it's just a matter of finding one that will share some info. There is another member who recently joined CF (look under Meet & Greet ...name is "Sangsom") living in Phuket that has a lot of delivery experience in the area and may be a good source of info.

[fred63]

Thanks for your information, maybe I was not really clear in my first message.

Thailand was just an example but actually my question was more related to the "Malaysian" issues (for a commercial Thai boat). Let say a Thai boat cruising into Thai waters involves regulations as you described well (I have been living in Asia for years so I am aware of that) as well as Malaysian waters.
What I do not know are the cross bording issues regarding Malaysian authorities or the opposite, Thai authorities if it is a Malaysian boat cruising Malaysia AND Thailand.

As another example, let's take a boat leaving from Singapore and cruising to Indonesia (Bintan) then to Malaysia and Thailand and back to Singapore. What is his legal situation when this small commercial cruise boat cross Indo, Thai and Malay border ?

Thanks

[hellosailor]

fred-
"let's take a boat leaving from Singapore and cruising to Indonesia (Bintan) then to Malaysia and Thailand "
Why speculate when any real business plan would begin with simply and directly asking the authorities in each country for the accurate information? You won't ever ge tin business unless you find out what the governing authorities are, and how to contact them, to make sure you conform to the rules.

Not what someone remembers they might have been or could be.

And you'll need to check each country individually, not just maybe someplace like someplace or other. Each one has the right to their own rules, subject to any international conventions they may have ratified.

[fred63]

Hi Hello Sailor,

Thanks for your reply.

It is not yet a business plan so I find easier to get unofficial general ideas about it on an Internet forum. Then, by experience and I live in Asia since many years, getting a quick and accurate reply from an administration is probably easy in Singapore, certainly not quick and maybe not even accurate in Indonesia and Thailand/Malaysia wld be between. In many developping countries, there are what the Law and interpretation and application of the Law

thanks anyway.

[denverd0n]

What you need to do is determine some specific, probable examples and then look up the laws on the internet site for those particular countries (or contact their consulates for information). I seriously doubt that you are going to get anything in the way of useful information by asking this question on a public internet forum like this one.

In general, you can often pass through a country without having to pay anything more than "normal" duties (though in this case it will be "commercial" duties, which may well be more). But that's just speculation, every country is different, and you are going to have to find the details for the places you really want to go.

[doug86]

If you take on paying passengers in one country, and drop them off in another country, you are running a cruise ship business. You will be subject to all the local laws and port fees in each country that you stop in.

If you are moving passengers for hire within the confines of a single country, then you are subject to that county's regulations concerning licensing of both the vessel and the crew.